I am in the third week of a cold/cough/sore throat virus that feels like it just will not let go. While I am much improved from when it was at it’s worst, I still have not recovered fully. With very little energy for anything but resting and reading, my late November and early December plans have become irrelevant.

I drift through the days doing only what is necessary—preparing simple meals, eating, sleeping, bathing, resting, reading. Each day I save up a little bit of energy to play with my camera and to edit photos. Tomorrow I am planning to do a twice postponed pregnant belly photo shoot for a friend of mine. Since time marches on and her due date approaches, postponing any longer is not an option.

At times like this, I am challenged to find gratitude, beauty and joy in my daily life. All sorts of old self-judgments about being sick and the betrayal of my body rise up and threaten to topple me into self-pity, hopelessness, and unhappiness.

“To move my body and like moving it, to reconnect with my body without fear, to fall in love with the feel of my body moving in space—an eagle, a warrior, a half moon—this is what I have been after. I remember hearing once that the composer Chopin, tired by years of being ill, confessed to the writer George Sand, ‘My earthly body has been a terrible disappointment to me.’ I get that. I have lived that disappointment.” — Donna Jackson Nakazawa, The Last Best Cure

Patience (never an easy thing for me to practice) becomes imperative, as does my daily meditation and mindfulness practice. While joy, beauty, and gratitude may be elusive, peace is only a breath away.

Yesterday I started reading a book by Donna Jackson Nakazawa, called, The Last Best Cure: My Quest to Awaken the Healing Parts of My Brain and Get Back My Body, My Joy, and My Life.

I had listened to Nakazawa speak on an online Autoimmune summit organized by functional medicine practitioner, Dr. Amy Myers, and was intrigued by Nakazawa’s one year experiment of using meditation, yoga and acupuncture to help heal or improve several serious autoimmune health issues.

Nakazawa’s book is a mix of the latest science and studies of what we understand about how early childhood stress can create conditions in the brain that contribute to chronic illness and how practices like meditation, yoga, and acupuncture can help rewire the brain to help heal. She interweaves her personal story and experiences as she embarks on her one year healing journey, with the scientific data, creating an interesting and compelling read.

I skimmed through parts of the book, often skipping a lot of her bits about the studies and scientific explanations of what happens in the brain to cause chronic illness, but read Nakazawa’s personal story more carefully. At one point in the narrative, she described a conversation with her meditation teacher where her teacher is helping her to name emotions and thoughts that arise as she attempts to focus on her breath. As the voice of her harsh internal critic becomes more apparent to her, her teacher suggests that she practice saying a single word whenever she notices her inner critic speaking. That single word is—

Forgiven

Not, “I forgive myself,” or “I ask forgiveness.” Simply, “Forgiven.” No need to judge, process, explain, or work hard to let go. Accepting that whatever her critic dished out, whatever internal or external expectations she had not met, she was already and always, “Forgiven.”

“All that’s needed is for you to stay close to your own experience,” she says. “Be with whatever is happening. Feel it, experience it, but try not to entertain the question, ‘What does forgiven mean?’ Just go back to naming the experience. ‘Here is grief. Here is doubt. Here is fear. Worry. Loss.’ … Catch the habits of your mind that are strong, name them, and drop in that piece of friendliness to yourself. Apply balm to the sting of self-judgment. Focus on working this new muscle over and over and over again.” — Donna Jackson Nakazawa, The Last Best Cure

Reading the word, “Forgiven,” I felt a palpable hitch in my breath and then a palpable release as I rested in the feeling it brought. Letting go of stories of my body’s betrayal and self-judgements about how I should be better by now or comparisons with others who are able to sail right through a cold without slowing down, I rested in the vibration of “Forgiven.”

Soul Whispering…

Just now, as I whisper the word “Forgiven,” to myself and to my body, I fall in love with my body again. Even though I cannot do everything I want to do today, I allow myself to be a body of joy, sitting in my chair, sunlight streaming through the window, already and always forgiven.

May I be filled with love and kindness.
May I be safe and protected.
May I love and be loved.
May I be happy and contented.
May I be healthy and strong.
May my life unfold with ease.
May I be a person of joy.
       — Donna Jackson Nakazawa, The Last Best Cure

What stories, judgements, or comparisons are weighing you down in your life? Try a little soul whispering starting with the word, “Forgiven.” Add a little meditation. And top it off with some loving-kindness.

May you walk in beauty.

I made the photos in today’s post this morning using my Canon 5D Mark III with 70-200mm telephoto lens and extension tubes.